


gaps of sunlight

by lamphouse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s11e23 Alpha and Omega, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Castiel (Supernatural), preemptive grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29787003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse
Summary: The last time Cas felt this devastated and lost, he drank an entire liquor store. By comparison, this is probably healthy.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 12





	gaps of sunlight

"I don't know how to live without him."

The last time Cas felt this devastated and lost, he drank an entire liquor store. By comparison, this is probably healthy.

Sitting in a bar with his brother, his Father, a witch, and his immortal nemesis, he stares at the television and waits. No drinking on the job. He has to take care of Sam: his only purpose, handed down by the missing character in this cast, the love of his long existence. Cas knew how much it meant for Dean to charge him with this, what had been essentially his own life's purpose; in small hours and buffer moments over the years, in their talks that always seemed too short, Dean called it his life's purpose. "Watch out for Sammy," he always put it, in a voice that was not an impression but obviously someone else's. "That's what I'm here for," and Castiel would privately disagree, but he understood. If Dean entrusted him with that responsibility—knowing that they both know how much that means—then Cas would do it. Would do anything. For Dean.

Still...

"I don't know how to live without him," Cas says plainly as they watch news that most resembles one of the often curiously accurate apocalyptic films he watched on Netflix. Even the worst ones got some things right: floods and quakes and social devastation Cas remembers from what feels like centuries ago. Seven years, in the grand scheme of things, or in even Castiel's personal experience, should be nothing, but it isn't. These seven years on Earth have been longer than any of his hundreds spent in Heaven or there before. He has lived these years not just in having to experience the passage of time moment by moment but in _living_ them, full bodily experience, as Dean taught him.

"What?"

Sam turns from where he had been watching God's slow deterioration in the booth behind them. Cas is hyper aware of both Him in the corner and Crowley and Rowena at the bar, but either they're all too caught up in their own worries or politely ignoring him, as no one reacts (and, to be honest, he can't bring himself to care about propriety right now).

"Dean." The name sticks in his throat as he realizes he's never going to say it to the man it belongs to again. "I've never had to live without him. I don't know how to do that."

"You existed for millennia before you ever met us, man, you'll be okay." Sam's eyes slip off him toward the window behind the bar and the dying sun beyond. "If we have time to live."

He doesn't begrudge Sam his grief—he feels it like shovels of dirt, packing him deeper into the earth, a physical sensation that rolls off him in waves—but he has his own to carry, unlike any he's felt before. Castiel has grieved for his murdered siblings, his friends, even for Dean, but it has never felt like this: so final, so quiet. Cas's grief is like a child curled up in the corner, a small but powerful ache in the center of his chest that sends pangs through his body no matter how he moves, and he doesn't know what to do with it but sit there and hurt. There's nothing he _can_ do but talk.

"It's not the same." That makes Sam turn back, looking Cas in the eye for maybe the first time since they left the cemetery, shaking blossoms from their shoulders into the footwell of the car. "Before Dean, I didn't truly understand what it meant to live. I had... moments, over the years, inklings of what it meant to be human, to feel, to choose, but I didn't know how to do any of it myself until I met him."

Sam fidgets next to him and Cas tries not to feel resentful of the fact that the last person to touch him there was Dean, brushing past in a last whiff of aftershave that Cas will quite literally never be able to forget. Apple blossoms and aftershave and the sudden vacuum of cold air are the last memory he has of Dean, and he will not forget.

"Now I understand all of it, choice and family and love, but..."

It feels wrong to say it now when he never could to Dean's face, but the truth is a heavy burden because for all that Cas might finally have the time to enjoy these things, he knows he couldn't without Dean. Dean is his family, his love, his _choice_ , and yet their plan to save the greater world necessitates Cas losing his.

Sam puts his hand on Cas's back exactly one and one eighth of an inch up and to the right of where Dean's right hand rested when they last hugged. "I'm sorry, Cas."

"I'm sorry too."

As they lapse into silence, Cas's eyes slip from the middle distance of the bland beige wall and back into the world. He hasn't really looked around since they first entered and he thought, "Oh, Dean would _hate_ this place." The pristine stools, the shiny bar, the clean, bare walls. Dean would call it "bougie" and roll his eyes at Sam for suggesting it before steering them into somewhere sticky and full of neon, the kind of place that would be full even now, one last round before the sun burnt out: the kind of place Cas pictured him in in his mind. Dean's natural habitat.

In some ways he's glad for this nondescript room that preempts associations. The chapter of his life where he could visit one such place is over now, he thinks. To go somewhere that reminds him so much of Dean and know that he will never again sit elbow to elbow with him, Dean's laughter directly in his ear from where they've been straining to hear each other over the clatter of pool balls, would be unbearable. It's unbearable now to even imagine it.

Crowley is still flicking through the channels, one hand waving listlessly at the screen while the other methodically takes a peanut from the bowl on the counter, crushes the shell between two fingers, and eats the remains. He hasn't spoken since they arrived, but Cas thinks for the first time he wouldn't mind.

It wouldn't actually be the same, because even unspoken as it was, what he and Dean had was better in every way than what the king of Hell could ever be capable of, but the tenor is similar, if not the extent. Castiel still hates him with all the reminder of his Heavenly fury, but they agree on this.

As if she can hear his thoughts' direction, Rowena glances over her shoulder now and finds Cas's eyes with eerie precision. Earlier, while Dean and Sam were busting ghosts and everyone else was wandering the bunker morosely, she'd asked if he was okay. He said he was fine, or at least, not any worse than anyone else. When he asked why she thought he wasn't, she shrugged and said he looked sad.

"I think it's the eyes," she elaborated. "You have quite sad eyes."

She doesn't need to ask now.

Instead, she gives him a sad smile and says, "Sensing anything?"

Cas glances at his Father— God— Chuck in his booth, the slouched, red-eyed pile of Creator staring glassily at an empty table. He wants so badly to spend these last minutes or hours or however long they have demanding answers, demanding fixes, demanding recompense for the years Castiel spent running madly across the universe looking for Him to _save_ them, but he can't find the energy to care anymore. God's best idea is letting Dean die. Cas doesn't care what he thinks anymore.

"Nothing's changed." Cas can't bring himself to explain any more than that: like how what he means when he says that is that he can still feel the worried, beautiful tug of Dean's soul thrumming out there in the world, scared and longing and so, so brave. Like how he's dreading the moment that tug snaps.

Rowena nods as Sam turns to stare at Chuck too, the worried whorl of his forehead hidden from Cas at this angle but present, he knows, nevertheless. The word "brother" has not held many positive connotations for Cas in the last few years, and possibly never did, but it is all he thinks as he stares at the back of Sam's head.

"Do you think he's gonna be okay?"

It's obvious Sam is not just talking about Chuck, but the answer to the unspoken question is too terrible to bear. He wants to say, _He told me to take care of you, but who will take care of me?_ To say, _Someone should at least be there to watch him die. He shouldn't have to go alone. He wouldn't have let us go alone; why did we let him?_ To say, finally, _I love him, and it was hard enough when he was here, but now I have nowhere to put that. Now what?_

Instead he answers, "I don't know."

The last time Castiel felt so utterly despondent was when he found out God had abandoned them. Now, God was sitting fifteen feet away, dying in tandem with the light of the world, and Cas has nothing to say to him, his own light already gone.

"I don't know," he says again.

**Author's Note:**

> no good reason for this, just the other day tumblr made me look at like 3 posts back to back about this ep and I blinked and this was in my google docs lmao. s2g I'm capable of writing something other than cas being introspective & morose! none of my other wips are like this! pigeonholed by coincidence
> 
> title from "[francis forever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMJm_97QXHA)" by mitski bc it took me 20 minutes to realize that's what my first line reminded me of, after which I picked this line bc it's short & sweet, _after_ which I remembered the whole... dying sun... thing...
> 
> tumblr @[lamphous](http://lamphous.tumblr.com/)


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